The authors analyze the determinants of global life satisfaction in two countries (The Netherlands and the U.S.), by using both self-reports and responses to a battery of vignette questions. They find global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily...

The Roy model predicts that migrants will be disproportionately drawn from the lower half of the educational distribution of the sending country if the sending country has a higher return to schooling. However, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. tend to be disproportionately drawn from the middle of...

This paper estimates the time preference of poor households in rural Mexico. It uses data from a program that randomly assigned communities to treatment and control and paid transfers to poor households in treatment communities. The randomization implies that differences in consumption between...

Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. The authors use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with...

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect middle school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student...

U.S. religious bodies continue to vary by their geographic distribution and their rates of growth. The changing landscape of religious adherence has many implications for communities on myriad issues (e.g., health, policy, social change). An examination of recently tabulated county-level numbers...

According to the life-cycle model, mortality risk will influence both retirement and the desire to annuitize wealth. The authors estimate the effect of subjective survival probabilities on retirement and on the claiming of Social Security benefits because delayed claiming is equivalent to the...

After almost three decades of sustained economic growth, Indonesia is currently in the midst of a major economic and financial crisis. This paper seeks to contribute new evidence on three questions: who has been affected most by the crisis, how they have been affected and how they have responded...

Inference from Web surveys may be affected by non-random selection of Web survey participants. One approach to reduce selection bias is to use propensity scores and a parallel phone survey. This approach uses demographic and additional so-called Webographic or lifestyle variables to balance...